Users of wide-area networks, such as the Internet, often express concerns regarding the privacy of user-specific information, such as personal information. Such privacy concerns are not only important to users, they are also important to businesses and other organizations that seek to employ the Internet and World Wide Web for business purposes, public purposes, governmental purposes, and so on. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has proposed a method that allows users to control more of their personal information. This method is referred to as the Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P). In general, P3P attempts to provide a standardized format for expressing the privacy policies associated with a web site. The goal of P3P is to enable users to be able to access, read, and interpret such privacy policies. Another goal is to increase user confidence by allowing users to determine whether a web site's privacy policies are consistent with the user's own preferences with regard to sharing their personal information. With P3P, web site privacy policies can be parsed (e.g., by a P3P compatible web browser) and compared to the user's preferences.
With P3P, web sites provide their privacy policies in a standardized format. The general format chosen for P3P uses the Extensible Markup Language (XML) standard. In general, XML provides a method for assembling structured data in a text file format. XML wad developed to facilitate an easy transfer of data across the World Wide Web. XML has been a W3C standard since 1998 and is generally known in the art. In the context of P3P, W3C has also proposed an XML-based language that is referred to as A P3P Preference Exchange Language or APPEL. APPEL is intended to allow users to identify their policy preferences. These policy preferences can thereafter be used by a user-agent to automate decisions regarding privacy issues. Details regarding APPEL version 1.0 are available from the W3C in a document entitled “A P3P Preference Language 1.0 (APPEL 1.0), W3C Working Draft 26 Feb. 2001.” One of the problems with APPEL, as presently understood, is that it is not easily used or understood by end users.
Another, generally unrelated area presently being developed by the assignee of the present invention involves the provision of web-services, sometimes referred to as software services or XML services. Web-services involve a new, user-centric computing model. More particularly, web-services connect Internet applications, devices, and services in a way that effectively provides a personal network that works on behalf of a web-services user. Such web-services include, for example, personal profiles, electronic calendars and contact lists, electronic in-boxes, electronic wallets, preferred application settings, electronic photo albums, news and sports categories, financial information, and so on. As can be appreciated, such web-services will typically gather and store user-specific personal information. It is expected that web-services users will prefer to maintain as much control as possible over who accesses such information, for what purposes, and using which methods.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for a user-centric system and method for controlling access user-specific information maintained in connection with a service provided by a web-services provider.